No I am not happy to have Mr. Sarkozy here. I don't care if Nicolas Sarkozy changed all his schedule just for you or this conference to be here. He is a politician, he knows his schedule, you surely informed him about the event - hey you two are best friends as it seems.

Why didn't he apply, why is he not a part of the programm? Why don't you tell your audience that you plan to give some personal political show? Maybe because people who attend this conference are not interested in? At least I am not, and I am a client who paid for that. And what do your partners say? Did they pay for that? Maybe they appreciate that - I mean there are upcoming elections in France... Does Money corrupt the Blogosphere at this level already - on such a massive scale?

No I am not a part of the so called creative class for any french politician I don't know and who is talking to me, a European citizen!, in french. I am not here for some catchy newspaper headlines that this guy showed his face at this so so Web2.0 conference to show his support for this new people who are so so open minded and critical. You abuse 1.000 participants to be part of something they maybe don't want to be part of!

That really pisses me off! Excuse my french.

What also really shocks me, that at least around me (some 50 people) everybody protestet against this permanent "change of programm" which brings almost NO added value to a Web conference. But they all keep their seats - they are all silent. They don't object. Are we sheeps here to accept this affront? This is a very very sad evidence of incapacity.

I am disapointed. I am disappointed of you, this conference and I will never attend LesBlogs/LeWeb anymore - But as I imagine you won't give a damn, as you don't give a damn about your audience as it seems.

Best regards,
Dieter Rappold

P.S.: and don't get me wrong - it's not about really interested politicians who want to enter a real dialogue. That's totally different. This show today makes a monkey circus out of this conference...

wow. i don't even think that money is involved. back then everybody was celebrating when sarkozy gave that interview to loic (like 'democratic media revolution' and so on). but you know its to easy to corrupt, especially when you are not much more than an amateur and suddenly get big attention, you think you got it made. and cant see that you are just used by people really knowing the bussiness. same thing back then in my oppinion. but what a setback for people like you, dieter, who really seemed to believe in that stuff ('how blogs revolutionize media, and change the world for better'), and now have to come to face that corruption knows no limits, and doesnt scare away from any media. because its people that corrupt not tv stations, newspapers or blogs for that like. so it was only a matter of time (and attention that blogs gain) for something like that to happen.
sad though, and i would be really angry if i would have paid to be there too (and even more about all the time that gets robbed!).
well europe really can make you sick from times to times.

This guy is possibly the biggest hoax I've ever seen.
Considered a "blog pionneer" even though he began blogging years after real pionneers, his poorly written and uninteresting blog has been quickly declining into a Sarkozy-propaganda tribune.
The most disturbing thing is that this guy is being invited to conferences, interviews, and is often quoted as the "french blogs pope" even though he is completely clueless and most of his readers keep reading him to make fun of him. He manages to be more ridiculous than Loique Jemeur, a parodic version of his blog.

in my opinion, thats one of the biggest issues in the blogging 'bussiness': the lack of professionality. any blogger who got a little attention one way or another is claimed to be a 'pioneer' 'pope' or 'expert'. then again its really emberassing to here most of these 'experts' talking on conferences, because they neither have deep knowledge about the topic, nor are trained in speeking.
but thats one of the sad mechanisms of the blogosphere: that any bit of fame is celebrated as a victory over the 'evil old media' no matter what. and when a clueless french guy is interviewing a complet and utter arsehole, whos only political achievmend seems to be to bash the frustrated youth of his country, some celebrate that as a win for 'democratized media'. or something.

I also think it was not good for the conference to bring all these politicians. Shimon Peres is the only one I would have allowed. What a pity, because the conference was going great, on the other hand. Hope next year it can get more collaborative also in the program's making off.

I could not agree more with you and actually made a quick post about that earlier today. We all like some flexibility in conferences to be able to include valuable contributions that actually add value, but we don't like becoming the instruments of propaganda. I was furious today because there were a few topics I would have loved to see covered better and which are extremely interesting (like for instance the impact of the web on television and traditional media). Generally speaking I found moderation of panels extremely unsatisfactory at this conference and what saved the whole thing is the quality of a number of contributions like Hans Rosling's, NIklas Zenström's and Shimon Peres this morning.

However sad the highjacking of the conference is, and I do understand your anger, I also think it would be quite nice to apply the definition Shimon Peres gave about democracy: "it's the right to be different, the right to make mistakes and the obligation to correct them". Perhaps Loic Le Meur will find a way to correct his mistakes and I will not judge him nor his expertise. Time will tell. Somehow we were all able to gather thanks to somethign he must have done right. I have myself made mistakes in life and decided to stop judging and start looking at people's weaknesses as though they were my very own... It's also perhaps a way to make our common path on this planet a bit better and far less ego-driven. In fact, today we all saw a great example of a total ego trip in M. Sarkozy's speech and dismissive way of leaving the conference without taking our questions... To be sure, blogs will buzz a lot about what happened today.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts and anger and I hope we can find a way to convert the nergy of anger into the creation of something better.

Thanx for your feedback and your thoughts - you are definitely right. It is not about judging others on their mistakes. I by myself make many each day. It is even not about persons neither Loic LeMeur, nor Nicolas Sarkozy. It is about something bigger - it is about the movement, the values (authenticity, credibility, openness, etc...) we are talking about and the things we believe in. So in the end it's a pitty, because I will also remember this conference as a place where I talked to dozens of great people who shared their thoughts with me... But this is not a merit of the conference, it's the people there...

Many reactions to our comments on our disappointment miss out on one point: It is not (at least not for me) the fact that politicians came into this but the fact how they where introduced and how the audience was used for a cheap marketing stunt.

If it would have been a session / panel on this, or if the french politicians had spoken to a european audience and for example have shown that they are ready to be statesmen in understanding the foreign audience, it would have been a different situation.

A discussion about politics, something to put the blogosphere in more context with "the real world"? Absolutly!

I totally agree with your point. It's really a matter of form, not a matter of rejecting politicians. The web has an inclusive culture, but there are rules and protocols for inclusion to happen, starting from the peer-to-peer nature of things, which hardly lend themselves to some guy inviting himself for his own reasons at a conference, broadcasting a message and leaving without taking questions... That's the 1970's mainframe era.

You must understand (and I guess you are now learning) that in France the politicians always get their way, because they always come first, before ordinary French citizens and certainly before what foreigners may want. QED!

And that is the very sad story of all this - what happened gives a picture of france. But I refuse to deal with stereotypes - there are some (probably less than five) people who screwed the whole thing up. No reason to judge a country or a society on that.

Although I have not enough insight into french politics to say if this is false/true. I hope for you guys that it is not that bad...

Is Loic lemeur for foreigners only a cool guy with permanent smile and always "it's great ! cool !" ?
Don't you know the real Loic Lemeur and his xxxxxl ego ? He didn't get anything real in the web (try to find some informations about his past in the web for example about marketo or tekora or rapidsite) except communication about himself. Only politics can think that he is a real bloger or "entrepreneur" . May be SixApart CEO can explain what exactly Lemeur does for them because as business there is not very a big amount of sixapart's blogs in France.. (even Le Monde runs know with wordpress and no more with typepad because of Lemeur..)

this sounds just cracy... i'm really looking forward to hear your detailled story next week.
last week i was freakin' out because of missing the registration, but this sounds like i didn't miss that much...

Hi, I'm french. I saw the sarkozy 'show' on vpod live streaming. Something shocked me when he started to talk : "he talks in french !?". Everybody makes an effort during this conference to talk in english, even some people who are not very fluent in english (like Vinvin for exemple).
For me, it really shows a disrespect to the audience to speak in french when most of the people in the room doesn't understand it. Even if there's a translator.

Our politicians suck, they can't speak english, they can't represent us well in foreign countries.

I was in the room and as a frenchman (i should rather say a european, since I also have german blood) I'd say that I was really positively impressed by seeing half the room leave the conference right after Sarkozy's speech (should I say boring monologue - reading his paper, stressing rather security issues more than freedom of speech and united-people-of-the-internet power, and finally with no interactioni with the room). A pitty really to see this happen...

Olso, your remark is too dumb to even bother answering it. Please sit down and think for a minute why "Blut und Boden" considerations are not a good idea when you want to organize an international conference in the local language. Or would you go to a conference in, say, Latvia if the sessions weren't in English? Wake up, French isn't the lingua franca anymore.

But this made me think of a good starting point for Leweb4: we could have two parallel tracks, one entirely in French, with such interesting debates as: Why France is the leading Internet country in Europe, New evidence of the superiority of the French language, and of course with loads of fascinating speeches by France's utterly interesting politicians. The other track could then be in English and discuss boring issues about new ideas, web paradigms and so on.

Désolé si je n'étais pas assez clair, je comprends que tu aies pu mécomprendre ce que je voulais dire. Sorry if I was not clear enough, I understand that you could have misunderstood what I meant (btw I hope you are NOT french, coz THAT would be very dumb, to speak english to a Frenchman !!).
J'ai participé à des dizaines de congrès internationaux dans des pays différents, et c'était jamais en anglais, ni en français d'ailleurs. Il y a une langue internationale neutre qui permet à tous de communiquer d'égal à égal, sans besoin de traducteurs ... Voilà tout. I took part to dozens of international congresses in different countries, and it was never in english, nor in french. There is a neutral international language, that enables an equal communication, with no translators needed. That's all ! (d'ailleurs, en 2005, y en avait un en Lituanie ! :) )

that was your boss? wow, I've never seen somebody speak at the speed of light without taking breath ;-) was quite interesting, but nothing revolutionary new. well after some sessions I decided to skip them and spend the time networking and talking with the interesting people there - that was a good one! Looking back the best thing was Hans Rosling vom Sweden and he was not talking about the Web :-)